Paul proudly served his sole veronique on Fridays. The customers were happy. Not only did the dish have his signature grape garnish, he took the extra step of providing the fermented grapes in two forms, on the plate and in the delicious bottles of wine from his uncle's vineyard.

Words are a game. Sometimes I play alone, but you are welcome to play, too.

Yves yawned. Before him, the llano stretched to the horizon. The road he was on split it evenly on his left an his right. It had been a twenty miles since he had seen the last other car, and he would not be surprised if another fifty rolled under the car's tires before the next.

Words are a game. Sometimes I play alone, but you are welcome to play, too.

The Llano Estacado described in the Lonesome Dove series by Larry McMurtry created a compelling memory. That is in spite of the fact that I've never seen it. I was able to put the imagined image into context because I spent four summers at a summer camp in Buena Vista, Colorado. Buena Vista is in a long valley on the east side of the continental divide which makes it chronically dry. It took some time each summer to acclimate to the seven percent average humidity. In spite of the need to drink a lot, I remember those summers fondly.

I wonder if "Llano Guano" would make a good counter-culture band name. If they were heavy metal (my mental image says they do), I probably would not go to their concerts.

Words are a game. Sometimes I play alone, but you are welcome to play, too.

There were only three sheet-wrapped, kneeling initiands this year. The fraternity was slowly fading away. This was, in fact, the last Psi Xi GNU chapter in the whole university system. The rise of the more open fraternities was the source of GNU's decline. Pragmatism was overriding Passion.

Words are a game. Sometimes I play alone, but you are welcome to play, too.

Betty's labor was pedestrian, in part because her myometrium was very strong. Her contractions were effective, the baby was born just two hours after the water broke. She didn't complain about the epidural shot, though.

Words are a game. Sometimes I play alone, but you are welcome to play, too.

Joel attempted to offset his middle-aged onset of madarosis by growing a beard. It did not help that he also had to endure male-pattern baldness along with the lack of eyebrows. He flat out refused to draw them back on. All he could imagine was Uncle Leo from "Seinfeld." A folded bandana across his brow helped block the sweat from his eyes, but he thought he looked stupid in it.

Words are a game. Sometimes I play alone, but you are welcome to play, too.

For Christians, Jesus is a revenant, I suppose. For some others, the zombie craze almost fills the bill. Can we include "Rip Van Winkle"? Woody Allen did a comedy, "Sleeper", which covered some of the same ground. I have not seen Leonardo's recent film, so cannot comment there.

Words are a game. Sometimes I play alone, but you are welcome to play, too.

If you know Greek, you might be a geek.If you know Latin, long classes you sat in.Working hard is the way to goAnd hope it doesn't take a decadeOr even decennium for you to get paid.

While it is noted in the definition that it is rare, I will disagree. Just like a decade, a decennium comes every ten years. Both words arrive in English through a typical, long language chain, but it was the Latins who passed along decade from Greek. Was Greek more scholarly back then than their own vulgar speech?

In english, you have two words (though one is rarely used) for the same notion.In french, ten years is "une décennie". Normally, "une décade" should only mean ten days. However, many french people, probably influenced by english, use "une décade"" to mean a decade, which is incorrect and misleading to those who know what "une décade" really means.There was one case, however, where the word "décade" was used correctly, in the title of the french-italian movie (though starring Anthony Perkins, Orson Welles and Tsilla Chelton)"La Décade Prodigieuse" a.k.a. "Ten Days Wonder".

Your reasoning is very ... well, reasonable, though you seem to have overlooked the fact that (English) decadent and (French) décadent can also describe a person, elderly or not, with only ten teeth.

When I said "should", it was not to express my reasoning. Rather, I was quoting what the main french dictionaries (Robert, Larousse,...) write, as confirmed by the french [url=https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/décade]wiktionary entry[/url]. This more or less fixes what is correct or incorrect (rather than decisions by the Académie Française, or political decisions about "official spelling rules"). But the dictionaries follow the winds of time and if the current trend continues, they will eventually admit that "décade" has to be accepted for "décennie".

Hmmm... Because of the "é" this URL does not appear correctly; but if I put a regular "e" instead of directing to the right entry, as it usually goes, it directs to the french dictionary entry for "decade" that also exists, treating this word as an english one. So please just copy the URL as it is to find it. In the "décade" URL it does say that the second entry, where "décade" is understood as "decennie" is an "anglicisme" (english influence) and the note [1] sends you at the bottom mentioning that Robert and Larousse blame it as incorrect, though Grévisse accepts it. Two versus one...

I see why (French) décadent could mean what you claim it should, but I don't see why (English) decadent would have the same meaning. To me it evokes some object (or person ?) that/who shows the signs of having been hit ten times by an object harder than it/him/her.

I remember owning a car that was decadent, before becoming hendecadent, dodecadent, etc. I think I got rid of it by the time it was icosadent or so...

Algot Runeman wrote:So, voralfred, is it the metric week from the French Republic calendar that standardized "decade" as a ten-day period?

"décade" was indeed used in the French Republic calendar, with three "décades" in a month. Whether it was already used in that sense before in french I don't know. The Athenians also used three parts in their calendar, but since it was a luni-solar calendar with months of 29 or 30 days, the third section's length was 9 days more often than 10. And according to the french Wikipedia article the names of the three sections did not sound like "décade" at all, the greek prefix δεκα was not present (though it was present in the name "δεκάτη" of the last day of the first and second section, and of the first day of the third section when it was ten days long)

Algot Runeman wrote:Is there any current group trying to promote decimal time measurement?

Not that I know of, but I did not research. I'm sure a good research on the Web would find some

Algot Runeman wrote:By the way, I recently read a vaguely related quote. "There are chapters of the Flat Earth Society all around the globe." Hmm.

ROTFLOL !

Last edited by voralfred on Tue Mar 01, 2016 2:25 am, edited 1 time in total.

Pronunciation: /ˈɔːdaks/noun (plural audaxes)A type of long-distance road cycling event in which participants must navigate a route within a specified period of time: the Essex Lanes 106 km audax

OriginVia French from Italian (apparently originally with reference to a ride from Rome to Naples first held in 1897), from Latin audax, audac- 'bold, daring' (see audacious).

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Alan the Audacious attacked every challenge with vigor and a weird perspective. He convinced the organizers of the Audax d'Oregon to allow him to enter and ride a 20 inch single gear banana seat bicycle. To their chagrin, after 207 kilometers of racing, he came in second. Scores of professional cyclists refused to ever enter the race again.

Words are a game. Sometimes I play alone, but you are welcome to play, too.